LoveSick
by spoonerdog123
Summary: You would think that if Marik developed a split personality from a deep love, it would somehow be a lot nicer than the one spawned by his deep hatred - yet it's every bit as destructive. (Fic swings between humor and darkfic, with a large number of ships explored, including Manipula, Tender, Psycho, and Death - full shipping list inside. Rated for kissing and creepy moments.)
1. Foreword

**LoveSick**

* * *

**Working Title: '**Psychoshipping Done Right'; but then the thing ended up messing around with a lot of other pairings.

**Average Chapter Length: **About 1500-1800 words.

**The Reasoning: **Having played with crackfics for a while now - can I write something serious?

**Updates: **Sundays, if not on multiple other days of the week.

**Warnings: **Pretty dark despite the summary, some kissing scenes in later chapters (which will be tagged for your convenience, that you may avoid them if you wish), weirdo concepts. The current plot, including all unposted buffer, explores the following ships:

- 'Chikan' Marik (the Yami Marik equivalent for this fic, created from Marik's love instead of his hate - er, don't worry, it's all explained) X Yami Bakura

- Chikan Marik X Ryou

- Chikan Marik X Marik

- Marik X Anzu

- Marik X Yami Bakura

- Marik X Ryou

- Yami Bakura X Ryou

- Jounouchi/Honda/Yugi X Anzu

**Names: **This one uses the manga names for the most part, so here's a quick translator for you:

'Anzu' = Tea

'Jounouchi' = Joey

'Honda' = Tristan

'Marik' = Nice Guy Marik

'Yami Marik' = Marik possessed by hate

'Chikan Marik' = Marik possessed by love

'Ryou' = Nice Guy Bakura

'Yami Bakura' = Bakura possessed by the Millennium Ring

* * *

**Note: **The following passage is a shortish foreword; the actual story kicks off over on Chapter One. Feel free to skip or skim this part if you wish.

* * *

**Foreword**

Before you read any further, you should probably know that this is a very silly story - oh, and it's a story that might just make you very angry. With that in mind - I don't want to start getting angry letters from you guys, all right?

As for the why... well, it's a _controversial_ story, sort of - or, at least, the most controversial you could make it without it being that offensive outside of a fandom hellbent on shipping. See, this is a story about what is perhaps the most addictive of any human emotion, and certainly one of the most destructive. This tale concerns a feeling which, if left unchecked, will ultimately destroy you, ripping apart your very soul - it is the story of an emotion which has adorned fanfics aplenty, one which has long been the focus of plays and poems alike.

Dramatic, yes?

Well, in not so many words, this is a story about _love_ – and love, as it turns out, is a long way from the innocent little thing many claim it to be. Contrary to popular belief, love is not the fake pink heart on a cheap Valentine's Day card, nor is it to be found described in the mindless, auto–tuned 'Baby, baby, babyyyyy, ohhhhh' so often inserted into pop schmop by a million hopeful crooners. If love is a heart, it is a burnt one – a heart perhaps consumed by its own passion in the heat of the moment – and if love is to be expressed in sound, it is a scream, a painful sound, a distorted guitar ascending a smoldering riff into the stratosphere. Arguably, it was love (or lack thereof) that was responsible for the death of at least Juliet, if not Romeo as well – two young minds, tender and impressionable, soon driven insane by the incredible passion each felt for the other.

Love is a strong emotion, a primal desire – and much like any other strong emotion, love is destructive in too large a dose. Give into your every urge, and your love will take over your mind, your every decision becoming biased, your whole life condensing into a single obsession. Let it go on for long enough, and you will surely become a monster; pure, undiluted passion, with no reason to temper it. Perhaps love is the opposite of hate, but that makes it no less dangerous – hate simply gets the worse reputation, due to the negative social connotations. When one really thinks about it, both love and hate may be classified as obsessions; the former being a desire to be _with _people, places, objects or ideas, and the latter being a want to be _without _the aforementioned (be this in simply avoiding the hated thing, or annihilating it to prevent any chance of another meeting). To love without measure is to give into that desire to _have_; to let that want conduct your life, and I'm fairly certain that that's not a good thing.

People kill each other in a display of hatred, certainly; but people murder for love; that sick infection telling them that money is all that matters, or that anything goes as long as you get the girl, or the car. Wars are sometimes caused by bitter ties between two countries – but more than a few can be linked back to a leader's love for extra land leading to an invasion.

If hatred is Juliet's falling on the dagger - a quick taking of the sanity - then love is Romeo's downing the poison, an agonizing and slow descent into madness.

And in the end, no matter which way you come at it, this story...

This story is about that descent.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**Warning: **This chapter contains strong hintage at perverseness.

* * *

The whole mess started, as many problems in our world do, with a girl.

Mind you, to say that to Marik Ishtar's face was undoubtedly to sign your own suicide pact – he was a hopeless case of male hormones where this particular female was concerned. To him, she was not simply _any _girl; this was the only one whose looks had actually made him sit up and take notice when she walked into the room, scribbling observations in a pocket diary, on a scrap of file paper, on his wrist – anywhere that was handy, basically. She had lovely hair; that was the first thing the Egyptian always liked to mention – it was dark and lustrous, tucked in a neat bob that bounced behind her whenever she walked. The pink monstrosity that was the Domino High girl's uniform clung to her curves in a way that somehow managed to be graceful, a way which was very carefully documented in The Notebook (for all things scribbled were, at some point, copied into The Notebook); the positioning of the tie, the length to which the skirt fell over her knee, how it swished and swayed a little as she stood still – the lot.

Eventually, Marik came to the conclusion that the uniform must have been tailor made for her; for how _else_ could she have looked so perfect into it? He had barely looked at her before – but that first day he saw her in the school corridor (she had just come back from a ballet camp, starting term a month late) – well! The Egyptian felt sick to the stomach; and he could have sworn his heart had jumped into his throat, forcing him to swallow hard several times. It was a poison he was swallowing, but he told himself that it was something delicious; learned as he was in the conventions of teenage romance, fed on Hollywood and sappy romance and god alone knows what else. It was a _good _thing, this sickness; it was _natural_.

That was his first mistake.

All roads in his mind soon twisted round, all curving back to the object of his adoration, what new things he could discover about her. For instance, some vocal experimentation revealed that her name – Anzu Mazaki – floated beautifully off the tongue; Marik could say it over and over without fear of becoming tongue tied after a few repetitions. He had written those two heavenly words on the front page of The Notebook in elegant hieroglyphs (or what he supposed was elegant, anyway), analysed the name with great diligence; frenzied Google searches on a sputtering smartphone informing him of the meaning of her name. Anzu meant 'apricot', Mazaki meant 'perfect tree'; and though he couldn't be sure about the apricot or the tree, he knew that she was perfect. Her being perfect was not _fact_, he knew that - and yet he simply pretended that it was, as though his judgement was all that mattered, the word of some higher being.

That was his second mistake.

The eyes, someone once wrote, were a window to the soul; and hers were absolutely entrancing. They were a bright azure blue, sparkling with merriment as she embraced her three closest male friends in what _she _called a group hug, and what _they_ called a mass groping session behind her back (though he highly doubted that she was aware of it). As they engaged in what was either a symbol of friendship or something highly perverse, depending on who you talked to, he watched such antics from a distance – going so far as to study the way in which Anzu allowed Yugi to get his hands just a tad lower than Jounouchi or Honda. And he dreamed about being in that hug himself, though the others were obviously out of the picture; they just weren't good enough for her. And that last thought began to take him over as well - not that he _hated _them, but rather he decided that they just weren't worth anything. They didn't deserve anything; not Anzu, and certainly not one fit for Anzu - which, in his diseased mind, was himself.

That was his third mistake - three strikes, and you're down for the count, arrow through the chest and _don't_ say Cupid.

* * *

Some of them may well have been heroes, some the villain of the week; but one thing the boys surrounding Marik at school had common was that every last one (with the possible exception of Ryou Bakura) was undoubtedly a pervert. Like most teenage boys their age, they partook in 'ogling' and 'peeping', whatever the heck those were – and they apparently used to be even _wilder_, back before they had begun to play Duel Monsters. Marik had heard the stories, each relayed in a rushed whisper and a torrent of spittle: how the pornographic tapes they'd snuck to each other had almost been discovered, how Jounouchi forwarded a proposal for a 'High School Girls Cabaret' for the school carnival three years in a row, how the boys became very interested in basketball as soon as they realized the advantages of girls with short skirts jumping – each tale more fantastic and perverse than the last.

You could probably say that the prevailing attitude had begun to rub off on the Egyptian a little in that first month of his education, before Anzu arrived on the scene – he certainly did begin to appreciate the curves of the female form after hearing such stories, though then again, he had never had an actual _crush_ per se. Oddly enough, the fact was something he was proud of – Marik had enough dignity not to be rendered useless by a particularly shapely girl, as he liked to put it with a teasing smile.

Of course, along came Anzu in her oh–so–perfect school uniform, and blew that clear out of the water, annihilating any sense of pride he might have had. He became significantly more interested in the bawdy stories after that first sighting, one tale in particular holding his attention – this concerned Jounouchi and Honda's legendary 'panty tank' trick. The story had multiple ones, but the general gist of it was this: With an ingenious use of a plank and a chair, the duo had managed to expose the soft white of Anzu Mazaki's frilly unmentionables, at the cost of their noses (which had always remained a little off–kilter ever since the girl thumped them). To be honest, the Egyptian always had to hold in a little whimper of delight when the teller got to the bit where the knickers were exposed to the world – how he wished his friends would run an encore performance!

Incidentally, whenever Marik asked the two marauders if they were ever going to try the same trick again, he made sure to emphasize that he only wanted to see the look on her face for himself; nothing more. It didn't do to be out and open about a major crush on a girl like Anzu – she was taken already, pity-kissing Yugi in the corridor when she thought no–one was looking, and he was a nobody in the group anyway. He kept his thoughts, not to mention his hands, to himself; patiently waiting for the day when he would be allowed into that 'group hug'.

Now, teenage crushes are usually fleeting to say the least, especially so when the feelings are not returned. There is, as a rule, an intense feeling over a period lasting several weeks to two months, then either the young person sees someone else who's hotter and starts drooling all over again, or they ask the object of their crush out (and from here the results may vary, depending on the response given – a kick to the groin is highly unlikely to be encouraging for our young Romeo). The crush is temporary, a simple sort of feeling which grows, then wanes – and, if the person is unlucky enough to have their emotion somehow found out, will serve as a permanent form of embarrassment in years to come.

However, the crush of Marik Ishtar on Anzu Mazaki was something different altogether – unable to admit his feelings to her, they stewed; to try and placate them, he wrote them down, but this action had him concentrating more on them as a result. Soon enough, reason was dragged down by love into the dark depths of oblivion; a love which was slowly becoming borderline creepy – give it three months, and it would become wholesomely so.

Three months passed, the leaves going yellow and falling from their boughs – and lo and behold, The Notebook became a _collection_ of tattered and dog-eared books on his shelf, every fold of Anzu's clothing given its own section, essays written on how each contributed to the flow of her body. Observation, he decided, was the key to preventing such literary works from falling into the realms of fantasy; and so the Egyptian watched her whenever she came within sight. It was amazing, really, how fast his mental health had degraded – just three months, and Marik Ishtar was no longer in love; he was _obsessed_, every single part of his body trained on something he simply couldn't have.

Needless to say, all it took to tip him over the edge was for Anzu to catch him staring one fine autumn morning in the schoolyard during recess, and bless him with a smile. To her, it was probably just a 'I recognize you, come and sit with us' sort of affair, but to Marik, it was something heavenly, something that had a Hallelujah chorus start up in the back of his head – the cute tugging at the corner of her lip, the way her eyes crinkled a little when she did it. With a nervous lick of his chops, he checked over his shoulder to make sure that someone else wasn't the target, only to find a second smile when he looked back at Anzu, which when combined with a nod that indicated that this was for _Marik_, was all he needed for his brain to finally overload. Within seconds, his mind had become a frothing saucepan of lovey–dovey emotion that now threatened to bubble over and burn his psyche for life, rendering the once intelligent Egyptian a total vegetable. His heart went into overdrive, blood pressure skyrocketing, sanity falling away, until at last he could no longer hold out against the intense love he felt for Anzu, rushing through his body and setting his nerves alight–

_Spare me the description and let go already!_

–and he let go, falling into insanity, flames of passion leaping through his veins, burning and burning and _arrrrrgghhh-_

And so it_ began._


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

**Warning: **This chapter contains some detailed kissing; not enough to shove the rating higher, but it's still there. If you don't want to read it, then don't.

For the record, I will not be running lemon or lime scenes in this fic.

* * *

He descended into insanity in a matter of seconds; his mind screamed protest for a brief, futile moment, then everything simply melted away, his skull meeting the ground with a short, sharp _crack_. Any semblance of control over himself was gone clear out the window, his whole body shutting down as a result - he found that he was going numb, and more concerningly, that his breathing was slowing, slower and slower; at this rate, he would surely stop breathing.

It was, therefore, no real surprise that he stopped breathing.

Fortunately, this wasn't the first time something along these lines had happened to Marik; he had been taken over by a ferocious hatred before, and let's just say that his brain had made a very lucky decision. Now it had the memory of the process involved as a precedent, his subconscious knew exactly how to deal with overpowering emotions such as hate, identical to the sort that were now threatening to kill their own creator. As they attempted to force his heart to stop, it reacted the way it had been taught to; splitting the Egyptian's personality asunder, pouring all of that love into the new mind; and, in this way, saved Marik's life.

_That_, in not so many words, is why the poor teen collapsed, laid low by the smile of Anzu Mazaki; closer inspection showed that he had fainted dead away. Worried friends lifted him up, later crowding about him in the sick bay, until the nurse told the lot of them to clear out – _and stop trying to avoid classes by invoking that whole friendship excuse, it's really not cute anymore, I've heard it a million and one times now!_

Of course, an argument ensued over who should be allowed to watch over the drooling Egyptian; it would have been strange if it hadn't, Marik's social circle being composed primarily of very determined, hyper-loyal young men. Eventually, the elderly lady _did _relent, allowing the oft–ignored Ryou Bakura to stay, admitting that such a studious worker would have no issues skipping just one class - _unlike_ everyone else present. The rest of the well–wishers were given a swift booting from the room, Ryou was told to be a good boy; and just like that, the obligatory plot point character was gone, never again to be mentioned in this fic.

And so, the scene was set – Marik unconscious, his friends all dozing in Maths, which just left the white–haired boy with the biggest following in the whole school awake. To be honest, Ryou didn't mind sitting in the sick bay for several hours; _anything _was better than facing the fan club, in his opinion. Producing from his school jacket a thick and well–leafed copy of _The Lord of the Rings, _he buried himself deep within the book, lost to the real world soon after, as he read for about the millionth time the bit where Frodo hurled the One Ring into the fiery depths of a volcano (ahh, if only that were his _Millennium_ Ring), and then everyone celebrated. Sometimes, when your life was going haywire, it was good to read a story so fantastic that it took you away from all your worries. Ryou's life wasn't exactly messed up at this point, sure; but it was _about _to be severely compromised.

You see, as a result of his reading, he didn't see something open its eyes, and blink – something that looked like Marik Ishtar, but really _wasn't _Marik Ishtar. For a few brief seconds, bolts of emotion flickered through the Egyptian's body, his chest convulsing a little as the two personalities struggled for control; sanity jousting against the incredible love that had threatened to kill him earlier – then sanity remembered this really _great _picture it had seen on the internet, and it was all over. The creature that had once been Marik sat up, running tan fingers through its hair until it stood out in a greasy halo of sorts around its head, completely ignoring the wary look Ryou was giving it as it did so.

"Marik…?" The pale teen's back brushed against the wall; he wasn't quite sure what to make of this. He'd seen pictures of the hairstyle before, and so understood that it belonged to the Egyptian's hate personified – but he'd never actually met Dark Marik in person, and surely the other Yugi wouldn't have been so dumb as to have left some avenue of escape when he'd banished that Marik. Besides, the way his friend now stared at the medicine cupboard before him was anything but hateful; it was more lustful, a gaze that was usually only witnessed in a certain sort of film, a genre that Ryou wasn't overly fond of–

–and Marik was _still _watching the damned thing.

It didn't take the pale teen too long to start getting worried.

"Um, Marik?"

At the sound of his voice, the head snapped around to face him with an audible _crack_, mad eyes staring into Ryou's; they were the eyes of an obsessive, bloodshot and longing. He blinked and looked away as soon as he was able (the clunky pendant under his shirt suddenly very warm, soft whispers slinking into his mind), but he still couldn't help but notice the way his friend was now running his tongue around the edges of his lips, leaving a wet trail behind. To be honest, that was the sort of thing that was simply very hard _not _to notice, and the Egyptian's performance would likely have netted not–Marik a major role in the latest upcoming horror film, had it been seen by the right people.

When, in a development most alarming, the thing began to pull its way out of bed, clawing hands reaching out towards the pale teen, about sixteen million thoughts shot through Ryou's head, which cannot be recorded here for obvious reasons. He backed up further against the wall, then further still, until he was practically flat against it – hard plaster grinding into his back, a tingling in his chest, a whispering in his ears, a sickly yellow light blossoming from his Millennium Ring.

Incidentally, all this came in stark contrast to the creature, who only continued to advance with a calmness that was nonetheless unstoppable; a single thought going through its twisted mind as it closed in, and a printable thought, too:

_Hubba-hubba! Drop and give me fifty, baby!_

And that, dear reader, is where the _real _story starts.

* * *

Ryou's first kiss, as many first kisses in our world are, was nothing like he expected it to be.

In the playful depths of his mind, it was to take place in a church, the day warm and pleasant_. _They would both be perhaps twenty–five or so, fresh out of university and ready to support each other; their personalities neatly balancing, that pesky Ring Spirit out of the picture. All thought would go straight out of Ryou's head as the command came –_'You may now kiss the bride'_ – and at long last, sinking into the sunshine that was his preferred happy ending, he would look into her eyes, bend his head a little in preparation, wrapping his arms around her as she advanced; always the confidence to his slight shyness. At last, the new groom would give into his instincts and move forwards himself, their lips connecting somewhere in the middle of their embrace. The kiss itself would be dry, not wet and sloppy; there would be no struggle of lips nor tongues, just the two sets of mouths meeting in a harmonious gesture.

In reality, Ryou's first kiss took place in the sterile white of a sick bay, a sixteen year old being pretty much attacked by something that definitely wasn't his friend, even if the body it inhabited happened to look like it. He dodged the first lunge, but it turned out to be a feint - before he knew it, he was pinned to the wall as though he were a butterfly in Haga's collection, the scent of disinfectant filling his nostrils, vision dominated by a restless gaze that bordered on evil. The kiss itself was moist, rough and oppressive - a little spit dribbled over the poor boy's chin as his head was forced sharply backwards, his neck aching in protest as it was held in an unnatural position. To top it all off, the other male seemed to be hellbent on _groping_ him, if the hand constantly trying to get at Ryou's hips was any indication. The whole experience was thoroughly uncomfortable, not to mention _scary_.

As the initial shock wore off, and oxygen deprivation began to set in, the younger teen squirmed like a fish desperate to escape a hook, twisting this way and that, his struggles becoming more and more dire, until he eventually managed to knee his assaulter hard between the legs. The thing–that–was–not Marik released him with a yelp, Ryou's slight frame sliding down the wall as the boy struggled to draw more air into his lungs. Before he could recover, the Egyptian was diving at him again, the pale teen's eyes widening in shock at the sight of that utterly insane face, then abruptly narrowing.

Ryou's second kiss was, luckily enough, not to be the second attempt from the creature that had taken his friend over; the thing's lips made it to perhaps ten centimeters from his, before they were repelled with an uppercut so swift as to send it reeling. Snarling in fury, the white haired boy tangled shadows around the monster's feet, sprinting for the door as soon as he was able, praying that Not–Marik didn't recover from the blow too quickly. He went speeding out into the corridor, face contorted into something decidedly more serious, accented shadows under his hooded eyes, the Millennium Ring under his shirt blazing with a sickly yellow light, hair spiking upwards as he yelled out several words that definitely weren't from any modern language.

The sick bay was very quiet after that; broken only by the ringing of the school bell, and the shifting of fabric as the Egyptian stirred. Wiping a little blood from his nose, Not–Marik sat up on the floor, gazing listlessly into the distance for a long moment–

–and _then_ he began to giggle, his face torn asunder by an enormous grin with far too many teeth in it, his eyes wide and his voice ricocheting off the walls as the giggles became snickers, which became laughter, which developed into an all–out _howl_, head thrown back. He was love incarnate, passionate but by no means gentle – and he was going to make the whole world tear itself asunder.

You could say that it was to be the most tearful breakup of all time, but I'm not really into bad puns.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"YUGI!"

Yami Bakura came bursting into the classroom, leaping over desks, sliding under chairs, paper flying everywhere–

–then stopped, apologized to the teacher, and tried the next door.

"Okay, take two - YUGI!"

Yami Bakura came bursting into the classroom, leaping over desks, sliding under chairs, paper flying everywhere–

–then tripped over Honda's outstretched leg, and fell flat on his nose.

Following this, was a long, thoroughly awkward silence, disturbed only by the dull thrumming of the air conditioner, and ultimately broken by the dull _slap _of the teacher's palm meeting her face.

"Ryou, how many times have I told you–"

The spirit lifted his head at that, spitting out a few carpet fibers as he spoke. "I'm not Ryou. I'm a dark spirit that has taken over his body; I am a professional swindler, not to mention a master thief. We've _been _over this, yes?" A toss of the head, followed up by a snicker that made everyone else in the room flinch. "Ryou isn't home, please leave a message, and he may or may not get back to you."

A sigh. "When exactly do you plan to stop pretending? This has gone on for weeks, and-"

"I cannot pretend, Miss."

"You just _said_ you were a professional swindler."

Silence.

"Well?"

"Penalty Game! ILLUSION OF 'SNEAKER TO THE FACE'!"

Silence.

_Silence._

**WHAM!**

_Thunk._

"Ahahahaa! My illusion is successful!"

Yugi considered telling the white-haired weirdo that it wasn't _really_ an illusion if it had actually happened; but then thought better of it, seeing as that the possessed boy was striding towards him - school jacket billowing out behind him, eyes full of murder - though he did at least glance down occasionally, lest he was tripped up again.

"YUGI!", Yami Bakura thundered, halfway across the classroom now and closing fast, the addressee of this latest yell simply sighing in resignation. The last time this had happened, all the pale had done was to repeatedly tell his frenemy to 'never give up'; this advice coming just as Yugi had discovered that his calculator batteries were flat in the middle of a maths test. It was completely unexpected and thoroughly useless, and he expected this time to be no different.

(As an aside; the resulting speech of last week's effort _did _admittedly distract the teacher enough for Yugi to quickly swap to his alter ego and complete the test in under twenty seconds [all Yami Yugi had to do was declare it a game, then use the magical powers of friendship to guess every single answer correctly], but that's besides the point; Yami Bakura wasn't intending for any of that to happen... or, at least, Yugi _hoped _Yami Bakura hadn't deliberately done that with intentions to try and help him out. The one thing worse than a sentient evil being trying to kill you was a sentient evil being attempting to _help_ you; at least the former kept its distance - but I digress.)

As the pale teen drew closer, however, Yugi became suddenly aware that Yami Bakura was breathing hard; mouth hanging open as he gulped in air; as though he were a goldfish removed from its bowl. In fact, the more the boy thought about it, the more sense it made - the comparison even covered his eyes, wide and terrified as they were, and even mentioned the little tremors racking his slight frame. "Y-Yugi..." The voice was higher than it had been before; more innocent - then the boy scowled, bangs flaring upwards.

"I think _I'm_ the better one to be telling him."

Back came the semi-wimpy look, and there Ryou was once again - the _real _Ryou Bakura - heaving for breath, looking as though he were about to collapse on the spot. "B-but you'll just twist the truth."

Yami Bakura folded his eyes and stared at the ceiling with the sort of look that should have caused it to fall. "And you probably wouldn't tell him _any_ of it."

Now they had piqued Yugi's curiosity; the shorter boy leaned across the desk, the Millennium Puzzle clanking on the edge. "Well, what_ is_ it?"

Two minds glared out of one set of eyes - the left one seeming to be slightly more malevolent, the right slightly more kindly - and their combined voice was equal parts Ryou and Yami Bakura. It was a startling effect; the lilting tenor with that sharp bass rasp; and perhaps one made even more disturbing when you realized that just this once, host and spirit were in agreement as to what should be said. "Shut up."

Ignoring the inner voice telling him to just relax and let the spirit of his Millennium Puzzle annihilate at least one member of the duo, if not the other as well, Yugi sat back in his chair to watch the show with the rest of the class - some of whom were starting to snicker. It was hard not to, in all honesty; the boy's hair alone was quite a sight, as it flapped wildly up and down - let alone the bizarre view his face offered, shifting from cute to creepy and back again as he conversed with himself. Jounouchi nearly passed out over his desk from laughing so hard, and even Anzu struggled to keeping a straight face - how ironic it was that, just for the moment, both of them had ceased worrying about Marik - _exactly_ what the pale teen had come to warn them about!

Still, there was no stopping the fight now, as what had been a relatively simple argument quickly escalated into an all-out war of wits between the two of them. There was little concern from the rest of the students with regards to their own safety, as they snorted, snickered, and occasionally added their own forms of incentive to the flames. Certainly - they had _used _to remain silent throughout the ordeal, each praying that Yami Bakura did not suddenly turn his anger on them - but these sorts of fights had become a very common occurrence ever since the spirit had allowed his host to remember what had happened whilst his body was not his, and their audience had soon found that most of the time the duo were too busy screaming at each other to bother attacking anyone else. Verbal stabs shot across the room, launched as though they were missiles - and of course, anyone else attempting to halt proceedings became collateral damage within seconds. Neither side was willing to give in - in fact, as always with these sorts of fights, the battle only ended when Yami Bakura finally took full control of the body, citing the body's rising blood pressure as a reason to continue at a later stage. "Yugi, I need to warn you-"

The thing is, by the time the almighty storm had passed, so had a good twenty minutes, which is a very long time for a psychopath to just knock on the door politely and hope that someone will let it in. Now, sitting in Yugi's place, the creature from the sick bay grinned up at the spirit. "Warn him of _what?_"

Yami Bakura froze on the spot; taken aback by the thing's seemingly sudden appearance. "What are _you _doing here?", he snarled out at last.

Not-Marik refused to answer - it clearly had other matters on its mind, for it looking about the empty classroom, a lazy hand tracing circles across the desk's surface. "Funny, everyone else seems to have run away. I wonder why?" A nasty little giggle, one that had Yami Bakura backing towards the door, pausing only to snatch a ruler from a nearby pencilcase, his fingers fumbling with the zip for the first time in what seemed like forever. "Maybe I killed them a little too much..."

"What _are _you?", the pale teen growled, and the monster stood from the chair in reply, flexing slender fingers as though they were claws as is slunk forwards, quickly gaining ground on its target.

"Me? I'm _love_." To Yami Bakura's surprise, the Egyptian angled to the left of him, moving past at a distance of a good couple of metres, forcing the young man to turn in order to face his threat, and keep turning as the creature began to circle its prey. "Mind you, you're hardly going to scream loud enough if you can't put a proper name on me, and we've simply got to have something to put in the ballad about how I destroyed the world. Now, there's already a Hikari Marik and a Yami Marik - that's Light and Dark Marik taken up..." It paused for a long moment as though in thought; if thought was even _capable _for such a creature. Before it could continue, however, Yami Bakura regained control of his voice, snapping his jaws together.

"You're_ love?_ Of all the freaking emotions you could have been, you had to be _love?_ Come on! How the heck do you plan to destroy the world - _such _anoriginal plan, by the way - with _love? _Are you going to force us all to watch reruns of the worst soap operas ever?" And he laughed long and loudly, until he was hoarse and his chest ached and _oh bugger _he'd forgotten to keep turning, now that _thing _was right behind him-

Tanned fingers teased through his hair before he could react, tugging a little at the white bangs, and he redoubled his grip on the ruler as the thing hissed ever so softly in his ear: "I would kill you for that little insult, only I'm already going to kill you. So, maybe I'll just... kill you a little bit more, perhaps."

The pale teen snorted in sarcasm, making his indifference known. "With love?"

Letting go of its prey's hair, the thing giggled in reply - a noise most threatening when it was coming from a certified nutcase who was _right behind you. _"Oh, yes. With love."

A sneer flickered across the pale teen's face, carrying a certain sort of savage mockery to it. "Death by love, then... So, are you going to make me listen to your nasty, nonmusical, lovesick ballad, maybe - actually, how about a pop song? I'm sure that would be _truly_ torturous." This verbal stab was followed by a sudden snapping backwards of Yami Bakura's elbow, a strike aimed at groin height, and then a quick spin around and swipe with the wooden ruler.

All of which, by the way, missed.

Silence.

_Silence._

"...You do realize you weren't supposed to move, right?"


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

How _exactly _'Marik' had managed to get a good two metres away from its attacker without the latter actually hearing or seeing its movements, the pale teen had no clue. He stared in some shock as the Egyptian settled on another desk, idly drumming digits on a slim black screen - a 'smartphone', his host told him. Yami Bakura might have laughed at the name, had he not been busy being cautious around this latest psychopath.

"So, about the name - I was just on my host's smartphone while you were talking, and according to this Google thing, either Chikan Marik or Hentai Marik will fit nicely. I did try Gure Marik - that means 'Grey Marik' - but then again, I'm not really _grey_. That brings it down to either 'Groper Marik' or 'Pervert Marik'." The smartphone was now brandished before the the pale teen, whose host managed to force him to automatically flinch back for a second. "So: Chikan Marik or Hentai Marik, what do you reckon?"

"Chikan," Yami Bakura said without hesitation, figuring that there was no need to make things any sicker than they already were - even if he did have to resist the urge to make some sort of pun on the resemblance between the name, a certain English word meaning 'fowl', and the Egyptian's signature-card-that-just-happened-to-look-like-a-b it-like-a-fowl. He honestly didn't feel that he should be reminding the thing of that card that had annihilated him before; even if the piece of paper that was apparently very valuable was now in the hands of Yugi Moto, it just wasn't a good idea. "It has a nice 'ik' sound to it - goes with well with Marik", he added, edging away from the thing as he did so.

A long pause - the young man using every moment to gain a few more inches of space - then the creature seemed to reach a decision: "Then I will call myself Chikan Marik." This was accompanied by a decidedly nasty leer from the thing; which due to the combination of the name and the body it inhabited, Yami Bakura decided to designate as a male. "Well, you can call me something now. Be sure to scream it out when I'm killing you, hmm?"

And just like that, he was on the move; striding briskly towards the pale teen, licking his chops. The spirit did admittedly consider running for a moment, seeing as the situation was well out of his control now - but then his eye caught the glint of gold at the creature's hip, and the thief hesitated for a second. A second too long; for before he knew it, Chikan Marik had thrown a friendly arm around his shoulder, and was grinning like... well, like a homicidal maniac. The demon growled softly at the touch - though of course one of his own hands was already on the move, automatically reaching out for the shiny thing. Right now, he knew that he had to keep the thing talking; he could always run after he had the Millennium Rod. "So, you are going to kill me - that brings me back to my first point. How _exactly_ do you plan to murder me with love? Shove a Care Bear down my throat? Strangle me with a candy necklace?"

The blank stare he received in exchange was disconcerting to say the least; made worse when the Egyptian stepped in front of his target to get the point across, forcing Yami Bakura to withdraw his hand and grit his teeth. After a moment, the Egyptian spoke: "What are you on about? That would be _hateful._" His eyes flickered to his opponent's pale hand, just for a moment - and Chikan Marik's gaze went accusing, a fiery sort of thing that felt as though it was slowly melting away the demon's brain cells. "_Hate_ destroys from the outside. Not _love_."

Yami Bakura swallowed hard; though that was probably his host talking - that, and the fact that the thing was reaching for the Millennium Rod stuffed in its belt - something _Yugi _should have had at this moment. "Then how..."

With a twist, Chikan Marik pulled the Item free, the sharp scrape of metal on metal obscuring the rest of the spirit's question as the dagger was unsheathed. Something brushed the edge of his mind, and he stiffened; noting with some interest that Ryou seemed to have felt it as well. The madman before the two of them snickered at the display of fear, moving ever so slightly closer to his target as he did so, a sick smile twisting Marik's features.

"Love... love tears apart from the _inside. _Your mind will be broken..."

Now it was Yami Bakura's turn to distort the usually innocent face of his host; the grin he gave could have given his many fangirls many, many nightmares. This thing could not possibly break his sanity, for it was already broken; his soul so fractured that he could seal tiny pieces of it into objects. "In that case, you can't hurt me. My mind..."

He let it hang, waiting - and sure enough, something again blurred past his brain, touching against his foremost thoughts; the Egyptian grinned a second later. "Oh, good!"

_So, he is reading our minds_, Ryou mused - but before he could mutter a reply, the spirit's attention was drawn to Chikan Marik:

"I'll get straight to removing your intestines, then."

Silence.

Silence.

"...Say _what?_"

"Funny thing, really." And with that, the creature moved again - all too suddenly, the pale teen's back was against the wall, the point of the dagger tickling his chin; he found himself looking for some way in which he could maneuver so that his ruler might cross Chikan Marik's sneering face. "You remember Hate - Yami Marik - trying to stab Rishid with this, right?"

_Hmm, so he remembers Battle City_, Ryou observed; the demon ignored him. "Well, of course," he yawned out loud, attempting to appear casual and utterly unimpressed - though much to his worry, the psychopath only snickered mockingly in reply. The blade pressed a little harder, then traced a thin, angry red line down the teen's neck - a mere scratch, nothing to be concerned about, but the warning was clear.

"During a stabbing, the knife, which is _outside _the body, enters _into _the body, causing a great deal of damage to the internal organs, as well as a good deal of pain - that was Hate's preferred method. Now, love - the body's organs, which are _inside _the body, come _out _of the body to impale themselves on the knife."

One eyebrow cocked, the teen now leaning almost casually against the wall. "You're going to stab me, then?"

"No, no, no. I'd never do that." He pointed to the other end of the Rod; the ridiculous golden bauble with the bat-wings might have made Yami Bakura snigger, if he hadn't been well aware of what it could do. "See,_ this_ end - which is not the end Hate used - lets me control you-"

"I already _know _tha-"

"-and, if I'm close enough, and you're weak enough, I can move organs."

The demon suddenly felt sick to the stomach; though that was undoubtedly Ryou's reaction to the news and not, say, Chikan Marik trying to control his insides -_ damn, knew I shouldn't have left him awake to see this! _"Y-you're kidding me."

"Nope. Wanna see your heart explode out of your chest?" He lifted the blade away from the pale teen's neck, perhaps about to make a comparison to a mushy song - not that he ever made it.

**SMACK!**

A quick backhand across the nose with the blunt ruler, a swift knee to the groin, a hand straight into the monster's pocket - and Yami Bakura was out of there, bursting out of the classroom and into the next, leaping over desks, sliding under chairs, paper flying everywhere-

-and then he ended up in the hallway, the _wet _hallway, slipped, and ended up moving at high velocity straight towards a window. The pale teen tried desperately to slow himself; but the liquid all over the floor wasn't making it easy; and the howls of Chikan Marik were making slowing down a less desirable option by the minute.

_Great life being a master thief, they said_, Ryou mumbled inside his head;but the spirit ignored that and continued to slide, only just maintaining his balance as he skidded, thoughts racing and heart pounding. He grabbed at a doorknob to try and guide himself; but missed, sweaty palms slick on the metal - and as a result overbalanced, taken sideways by his own momentum, knocking over a warning sign about the wet floor in the process. Somehow, impossibly, he managed to continue forwards, arms windmilling-

_Oh, you'll be so stealthy if you're a master thief, they said..._

He bit his lip. "Shut up already!"

"What about stomach cramps? I do a good stomach cramp - and then, _kablooie_, out come your guts!"

_It's a man's life being a master thief, they said. Not like you'll ever be running away or anything._

"Will you shut up already?"

"Who, me or the crybaby?"

Yami Bakura spun on the spot, to find Chikan Marik strolling down the corridor, sure-footed in his sneakers; his Domino school jacket flapping oh-so-casually behind him, eyes alight with a truly frightening level of enthusiasm -

"Both!"

With that; the Ring around his neck began to glow - and so Yami Bakura called on skills learnt many years ago (thank every single Egyptian God for Ryou's liking of ice skating, it had meant that the host's body was at least semi-prepared for what the spirit was about to make it do), kicked off his shoes, paused a moment, the Ring glowed a little brighter-

-and _then_ the pale teen shot straight backwards in a series of graceful movements best compared to those of a professional skater, coasting swiftly across the floor and picking up speed, faster and faster, Yami Marik's threats whistling past him. Without further ado, he performed a one-eighty degree turn on the spot, and there was the window, and he jumped-

_Wait a sec, are we seriously going out that win- oh god OH GOD NO NO NOOOO-_

**CRASH!**

* * *

**Author's Babble: **And there you have it - the first five parts of this thing, all posted at once for no good reason. Still, I have a veritable arsenal of buffer here, so it's all good (or not, depends on whether or not you liked it).


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Windows, as is the case with the ones in our world, are not supposed to be jumped through.

If ever one simply _must _just jump out of a window, and cannot be persuaded otherwise, there are of course enthusiast clubs dedicated to the art; these provide the jumper with specialist equipment such as parachutes, jetpacks, and strap-on mattresses. However, even they obey rule number one of jumping out of windows, also known as the First Law: 'Don't ever jump _through_ a window'.

This is, in practice, because the high velocity of the jumper will fracture the glass; and so a hundred very small, very sharp spikes will drive into the face, shoulders, and torso of the jumper - in addition, one's legs may be torn apart, as they are dragged at high velocity over whatever jagged edges have been formed at the sides of the window frame. The parachute, if the jumper has one, is certain to catch on this area of the glass - in which case, either it will be slashed to pieces, or it will simply hang there; leaving its owner to holler warnings as they drip blood onto passers-by below them ('Heads!') - unless, of course, it has tangled in such a way as to suffocate them.

However, the above reason is mostly unimportant; the _main _reason that the enthusiasts stick to the rule of never jumping through windows is more due to the convoluted, twisted, yet still somehow lengthy arm of the law. By jumping through the glass, you are effectively causing damage to someone's window; and so the owner of that window may sue you for multiple counts of property damage. In addition, the passers-by may also sue you for dripping on them (blood is very hard to get off certain expensive fabrics), for accidentally stabbing themwith falling pieces of glass, for causing a disruption with your nasty bleeding and your loud groaning (honestly, you haven't had a _truly _bad day until a near corpse lands on top of you), or even for giving their dear grandfather a heart attack when he saw you all bloodied like that, as seen in one very famous case. Thus, even if you somehow survive being shredded during your efforts in jumping through a window, you will find yourself paying out huge sums of money to some very angry lawyers.

Now, Yami Bakura (currently set in a trajectory for the window) was a bright young man ('bright ancient spirit' doesn't quite have that _ring _to it, y'know?) – or, at least, intelligent enough to know that being sued was not good news; and that being ripped asunder was evenless good.

This, in short, is why just before he could hit the glass, the pale teen suddenly twisted in midair (several of his host's ribs making ugly snapping sounds as he did so), pushed off against the window, and went flying in the opposite direction. Seeing as all of this happened in a split second, Chikan Marik was still racing for the window - so Yami Bakura, in his generosity, aided his enemy's motion path with a good heel to the small of his back as he shot past the Egyptian.

And well - after that, it was all a question of momentum. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and so on the near frictionless floor, Yami Marik found himself shooting forwards at a much higher speed than initially intended.

**CRASH!**

_NOOOOOOO–_

The pale teen managed to slow himself on the slippery floor and turned gracefully to face the broken glass, still drifting slowly backwards in his socks. "We didn't go through the window, Ryou."

_Oh. Right. __**Sweet, I can control this one!**_

"Shut up."

_Who, me? __**You're talking to me, right?**_

"Yeah, shut up already!"

_Well, that's just being offensive.__** Yeah - you don't want to upset your buddy, douche.**_

"_You're _the douche!"

_You know what? I take back what I just said before. _Now_you're being offensive. __**Hahaha, I got your frieeeeend!**_

"He's not my friend, he's my host **and I hate him **- oh, come on!"

_You take that back right this minute! __**That's why you don't let down your guard, see?**_

"Don't you start lecturing me!"

_That does it, I'm telling Yugi on you!_

And that was about when Yami Bakura, determined to break that ridiculous wall of dialogue unfollowable, hearing the dull wail of sirens in the distance, took a small series of steps towards the shattered pane, climbed carefully out onto the sill, facing back into the hallway-

-then leaped straight backwards as though he had been doing it all his life (and had, sort of), dropping down however many stories the school was, one fist extended below him in the hopes that Chikan Marik would still be there - perhaps even with that horrible face of his turned upwards towards the sky.

Let's just say that the spirit was certainly not disappointed.

* * *

The little hotel room was cold, icy cold, despite it being only autumn; and in the center of the bed the prey crouched, ready to flee at a moment's notice - he had remained in this positioned for perhaps a day now, and was definitely shivering a little in the near-darkness. The voice had told him that it would be fine to have the gas heater, or at least the lights - but he somehow hadn't quite believed it; and he didn't dare go near the windows, for fear that the creature might come leaping through with a knife. The curtains, drawn as they were, might serve some form of protection - the thing could become entangled with them as it crashed through, giving him a valuable avenue for escape. As the voice had snarked, his room _was_ six floors up, so the chances of the beast coming through a window were admittedly slim - but it could still happen. At any rate, he wasn't taking any chances with that kissing, murdering-

_Murdering...?_

Ryou Bakura felt the cold metal of the Millennium Ring brush against his chest, the other mind stir just a little - and immediately took advantage of the brief moment of contact he had. This entire situation was technically Yami Bakura's fault for attacking Chikan Marik like that, and an apology was probably better than nothing.

"You just _had _to hurt him, didn't you?" He tried his best to sound angry, but his voice was weak, strained from the cold - not to mention the intense physical effort Yami Bakura had put his frail body through, untrained as it was for such endeavours.

Under most circumstances, the Ring would surely have remained dormant - but, perhaps due to the other mind being drowsy with sleep, a voice that was not his resonated around the room (or was it only in his mind?), sending extra shivers through the pale boy.

_He deserved it._

"I don't _care _if he deserved it! What if he comes to kill me because of-"

Ryou was halted by his own jaws - suddenly forced wide in an enormous yawn that was not his, the boy's own speech trailing off into a gurgle. When he did eventually swallow and speak, his voice was now low, dangerous: "Do you really think that I would put you - and by you, I mean _me _- in danger?"

The boy attempted to form a reply, but the spirit was holding his voice hostage; so he simply thought his dialogue at the thing, as it had been doing seconds earlier. _Erm-_

"I've protected you, all this time - or did you forget?"

The boy bristled inwardly at being interrupted, performing the thought-speak equivalent of senselessly blurting out the first thing that came to mind: _You made me forget it._

"And after that, I made you remember it again," the spirit countered smoothly, syllables sliding over the boy's tongue, words he didn't even _want_ coming out of his mouth slipping out between his lips in his other self's trademark rasp. "Did you want to pretend that I was evil? Forget Battle City, perhaps...?" And then, it had jerked the pale boy's control out from under him and so, with a sickening lurch, Ryou found himself to be in the passenger seat of his own consciousness. "Did you make yourself forget Battle City?, it asked again - and at that moment, the owner of the body panicked. This was, in hindsight, somewhat understandable - his thoughts were muddled from the sudden shift, any semblance of his usual tact gone - and so, when asked such an accusing question, common sense simply bolted down the metaphorical rabbit hole.

_What, when you got me killed by Yami M-_

"That wasn't part of the plan!", the thing growled; and the pale teen automatically shrank back from the spirit, his mind attempting to back as far back in the driver's seat as it could. To his surprise, however, the action only made his other self snarl, his lip curling upwards in a way that made his host appear to be near-psychotic. "Still scared of me, are you?" It shook its head, then suddenly turned in the middle of the motion, staring hard into the little mirror on the dressing table. "Look at me!"

_N-no! _Ryou had been through that one before, several times now; and the technique still hadn't worked. Prior experience said that he would look through the spirit's eyes, and see his own face contorted by the thing's evil, evil whims-

-and needless to say, neither was expecting the knock on the door. The host's presence surged in his own terror; and so the boy curled on the bed absolutely _shrieked_, in a way most undignified for both minds, their twin efforts to make him shut up resulting in a nasty sort of gurgle.

"Ryou! You all right in there?" The voice made him relax, but not by much; for Yami Bakura had just forced the other mind into control, the sensation causing him to twitch involuntarily several times.

"J-Jounouchi?" He frowned at the name, considering - wasn't Jounouchi supposed to be _dead?_

"We don't have to kick the door down again, do we?"

Perhaps the blonde's voice carried a distinctly jocular element to it - but all the same, the teen blanched whiter than usual; scrambling to get off the bed and reach the door, before it could fly off its hinges in an effort to reach him. He grabbed at the handle, pulling the door wide open; "Jounouchi, I-"

But Ryou stopped midsentence, leaping back from his friend, his eyes narrowing in suspicion for a moment, before they widened in realization of the obvious.

You see, Jounouchi was not exactly _alone_ - he had brought no less than four of his other friends along for the ride; three of whom should logically have been deceased by now. There was Yugi, looking as though he had been dragged from his bed recently, and Honda, running his fingers through that ridiculous brown spike he called his hair. Anzu smiled quietly at him from just behind the three boys, and next to her...

...why, next to her was the _problem_, the thing that should have killed the other three, assuming the worst about the whole classroom endeavor.

"M-Marik!", he yelped out, stumbling backwards in recognition.

The Egyptian grinned at him, all carefree and foolish, even greeted him with a neat little bow - "Hello, Ryou", he went - and the pale teen's stomach flipped over for the second time that day, his instincts screaming at him that this whole scenario was all levels of _wrong. _He stood there, slack-jawed before Marik, not exactly certain about whether he should slam the door in the guy's face or run like hell; and in the end, he did neither.

"Hello," he replied at last, inclining his head a little - and just for a moment, as he looked on, Marik's grin went psychopathic, a sudden wide gash across his face. Ryou winced as the usually amethyst eyes flashed a deep crimson, shivers racing down his spine when the Egyptian decided to say something else; something _horrible._

"So, I wanted to say 'thanks' for looking after me in the sick bay..."

* * *

**Author's Babble: **And so we start to get some semblance of a plot happening here - and also, a cliffhanger. Yay?


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

With a sheepish sort of smile, Marik took a step forwards, nudging Yugi to one side. "So, uh - thanks?"

_No..._

There was no way that the Egyptian merely wanted to thank him; Ryou was smarter than that. His mind raced, images of the psychopath who more often wore that grin flashing through his head - and when the other teen held out a hand for him to shake, he didn't move. If this was Chikan Marik, there would undoubtedly be some trap in those outstretched fingers; it was best not to take such a risk. He instead considered Marik a while, running his gaze over the young man. He didn't _look_ that crazy, not right at this moment - though Ryou did note with a wince the fading signs of cuts, plastered as they were all over his outstretched arm, presumably gained when the Egyptian's alter ego had taken that dive out the window.

Silence stretched between the two of them; an expectant silence, as Ryou watched Marik as though the latter was reaching out for him with a knife, and the Egyptian's smile slowly decayed into something wooden, then something plastic, then vaporized altogether. After a long pause, Marik dropped his hand awkwardly to his side, choosing not to pursue the matter as he stepped back and away from the pale teen. "I guess you're not a very _shaky_ person, then", he mumbled, taking a step back - and just for a second, the horrible grin sparked across his face once again, swiftly replaced by a far more gentle expression as he smirked at his own pun.

Ryou started in surprise, eyes going wide; "M-Marik..."

And he stopped himself with a swallow, because what the heck was he meant to _say_? Drawing attention to the possibility of this guy being a total whacked out psychopath could get him attacked, but he doubted he was going to be able to lie through his teeth as he always did and simply turn Marik's name into the start of some innocent question; not with those memories of what Chikan Marik had done screaming through his brain.

"Are you okay?", Jounouchi was asking; but the pale teen wasn't exactly listening - his own eyes were locked on those lavender ones, seemingly _loyal _and _friendly -_ even though Marik's other hand had remained behind his back the whole time, and Ryou's thoughts on seeing that grin were a long, long way from friendship at that point. Surely, if his own alter ego of sorts could imitate its host, then Chikan Marik could do the same - and he here ignored the drowsy protests from his Millennium Ring; insistences that Yami Bakura was _nothing_ like Chikan Marik, in origin nor nature. An extra voice in your head was still an extra voice in your head, Ryou replied - and the matter was _closed_, because Honda now appeared to be yelling something of some importance ("Ground Control to Major Ryou, come in please!").

_What are you planning?_, he accused his frenemy in the confines of his own thoughts, even as he absentmindedly reassured Yugi that yes, he was perfectly fine, he didn't need an ambulance or anything, and it would be very nice if Honda could possibly stop shaking him, he was just _thinking_. He engaged the others in idle chat, asking what had happened to them with Chikan Marik (though he was careful not to use the name, as that would indicate that Ryou had had some other contact with the psychopath) - apparently they had all gotten away from 'it', which had later been defeated by Yami Yugi in a duel.

_How very anticlimatic_, went the Ring, and Ryou just sighed. You see, he didn't quite believe any of it, much as he wanted to; instead, he found himself noting that the Marik was oddly quiet throughout the retelling, seemingly consulting his shoes. As Yugi finished his story, the Egyptian's head suddenly jerked up; it would have been as though he had just remembered something he needed to say, were it not for the sick _crunch_ that more indicated that some puppetmaster had taken the boy's body over and-

-ah, what was he thinking? The pale teen sighed inwardly; that didn't even make sense, assuming that Marik was _already _under the control of his alter ego - but then again, could that really be assumed? Could it be that that the Marik from earlier was the _real_ Marik; even if he did grin like a total psycho from time to time? Or - and to Ryou, this seemed more likely - had Chikan Marik merely relinquished control over his host whilst Yugi and his buddies had been talking? Then again, surely Marik would have _said _something about it-

"Oh - yeah! I brought you something to thank you with..." Marik's voice trailed off for a moment, but then it came back, stronger than ever. "...If that's okay, I mean."

Ryou's whole body automatically tensed, his heart missing a beat.

_Here it comes._

Whatever nasty plan Chikan Marik/Marik/whoeverthehellthisguywas had in store for him, he was about to spring it now; there was no doubt about that in Ryou's head. The Ring tingled under his shirt, causing him to fidget a little as the other voice reared its metaphorical head in argument: _The way I see it, that's Marik. Normal, ordinary Marik._

_What about that grin?_

_Do you honestly think that Chikan Marik would try to kill you with **Scrabble?**_

At the snarky tones present in his alter ego's voice, the boy snapped back to reality, in order to quit staring dumbly at the box Marik was attempting to present him with, and actually take it up in his shaking hands, muttering a quick thanks under his breath. _Well, he probably wouldn't, but Mari-_

And in the outside world, the Egyptian tilted his head to one side. "So, wanna play?"

Ryou automatically went to refuse, but was interrupted by the sudden need to take evasive action - because, without waiting for an answer, Jounouchi barreled into the flat with a wild whoop of "Games!", and would have surely trampled the smaller boy had the latter not gotten out of the way, making a sideways nosedive for the carpet. The pale teen actually heard a _whoosh_ of air as the blonde just missed him, the sneakers he so often bragged about creating a miniature thunder of sorts in the tiny flat, the floor shaking under Ryou as the behemoth charged by.

Scrambling to his feet and whirling on his heel, the boy winced at the sight of Jounouchi making a beeline for the clunky table in the corner; one Ryou normally used for the role-playing games he played with himself. Much as he didn't like running, the pale teen found himself forced to race after the blonde, in order to try and prevent his friend from doing too much damage in his attempts to remove what miniatures had already settled there. "Careful with the wings- ah, no!" He snatched the little angel out of range of the grasping digits of his friend, shaking his head as he attempted to get the spear back into its little hand and keep an eye on Jounouchi at the same time.

"Hey, this one's awesome!"

"Er- don't put him in that basket!"

"What, he's a _he?_" The blonde snickered. "He looks so feminine, thou-"

"Yes, because that class is _naturally built that way_." In a split second, the little war-pixie was out of of the giant's hand, Ryou placing it in the case he always put it back in, the one with the pharaohs and the war chariots. He looked over them fondly for a moment, remembering when he'd put each one together, how long it had taken him - every detail immaculate, the scythes so well done that they looked as though they could really cut you clean in two-

"Isn't this... Zorc?"

Ryou groaned inwardly, but smiled outwardly, gently prying the black monster from Honda's grip as Jounouchi's other friends crowded around the table, each attempting to help the pale teen clear its surface with varying levels of success. "Yes, it is."

He turned it over several times in his slender fingers as the others tried to explain the importance of Zorc to Marik, remembering what he could about the incident, and the many times he'd attempted to destroy the little miniature, each time failing; and eventually took it over to a shelf before his friends could get suspicious. This gave him an advantage - now he could frown without anyone seeing his face - and frown he did, because the Ring was suddenly very much nestling against his chest; as it always did whenever he thought about That One Figure. One pale hand traced a pattern across his torso, describing a slow circle, trembling as it brushed this point or that point - and _point_, all right, because that was where the spikes had gone in-

_Don't get excited, I'm not about to stab you_, his head-voice yawned, forcing him to turn and face his friends, making his face crack a smile, making him laugh and chat and clear the table as it immersed him in his own memories; once again showing Ryou Bakura every single time the Spirit had saved his sorry little butt, even as he wriggled uncomfortably in the theater of his mind. To be honest, you couldn't blame him; he was, after all, watching the mental equivalent of television reruns, with the ad breaks replaced by the occasional message from his other self.

_Can't we do this later?_, the boy pleaded after a while; not because he was finding the show painful to swallow, but more because he wanted to keep an eye on Marik at this point. Marik, he told himself, was dangerous. So was a disobedient host, Yami Bakura pointed out; but Ryou objected to that - at least _he_ wasn't going to knife himself in the ribs, whereas Marik just might - and ultimately, the pale teen won the argument. The images blinked, then vanished from his mind, followed up with that familiar dizzying lurch, and-

-_well_, the next thing the boy knew, he was playing a game he definitely didn't want to play, with people he definitely didn't want to see in comas, and a guy he definitely didn't want anywhere near him sitting at his table. He guessed that the game had been going for some time now - for there were many letters on the board, and the others seemed to be getting right into it. To his left, Yugi was holding a whispered conference with Jounouchi, who was waving a dictionary; whilst Honda, sitting on Ryou's right, was watching his letters as though they might jump off the holder at any second.

Opposite him, Anzu stared in puzzlement at the letters on her own board, Marik attempting to help her out. Naturally, it was here that Ryou's attention was drawn, as opposed to the odd little side glances Honda shot him whenever he figured that the pale teen wasn't looking, or Yami Bakura's repeat attempts to explain that the group had formed into teams of two. He watched the duo like a hawk - if anything was out of the ordinary, he wanted to know right away.

As it happened, it was Anzu and Marik's turn to make a word. The Egyptian was leaning over the girl, seeming to enjoy that moment his hand made contact with her shoulder for just a split second too long - a small gesture that nevertheless put Ryou on edge. After a while of staring, Marik blinked stupidly, then rearranged whatever letters his friend happened to have ("See? That uses all seven..."), grinning foolishly when she giggled and nodded in reply. Almost lazily, he dipped his fingers into the bag of extra letters, drawing out another seven as Anzu laid out a new word, joining it with the 'O' of the 'M-O-N-S-T-E-R' Yugi and Jounouchi had spelled out on their turn:

**L**

**O**

**V  
**

**E**

**S**

**I**

**C**

**K**

Ryou's heart plummeted.

Yugi winced.

Jounouchi and Honda snuck each other perverted glances.

And Marik...

Why, Marik _laughed._

* * *

**Author's Babble:** Whaddya mean, that title was a spur of the moment affair? It has meaning - _meaning_, I tell you!

This chapter's a tad more serious than the last, but I'm fairly sure that it balances out when you consider that they're being this serious over _Scrabble_ of all things.

...Also, I feel like that cutoff is a bit odd, especially considering what happens next. Ah, well.


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

Marik's laugh, Ryou decided, must have been a remnant of the bad old days, from when he plotted and schemed and occasionally attempted to kill, Yugi and friends being right at the top of his list when they'd first met. The teenager didn't seem to understand just how bloodthirsty his energetic cackling happened to sound, how much cruelty lay embedded within it – you could almost hear the words 'I'm gonna kill you, Yugi!' shouted out somewhere in the middle of it. If the Egyptian had been aware of how disturbing his laughter sounded, Ryou was certain that it would have been corrected; an unwanted artifact of his turbulent past swiftly replaced with something far more pleasant.

For the time being, the laugh was _ambiguous_, in a funny sort of way – one could not tell who it was directed at, nor whether it was in fact an outburst of innocent mirth or fiendish triumph; the young man's expression clashed severely with the sounds coming from his mouth.

Now, Ryou had a fertile imagination – so, paranoid as he had become by this point, he found that he was able to picture a terrible scene in his head from that laugh alone, unable to stop himself from doing so, from closing his eyes to get a clearer image. Marik was, in his head at least, standing in some abandoned tomb as his best assassins raced off to complete some dastardly deed, giggling like a maniac as he embraced the genius of his own plan, joyful that at last, after all his hard work and careful planning, someone was going to die, horribly and painfully. The boy blocked out the repeated low growlings of Yami Bakura as the spirit became impatient about being unable to see, sinking deeper into the pictures he'd conjured up; now Marik was taking the Millennium Rod out and stabbing someone who had displeased him, screams echoing in Ryou's head amidst the laughter–

–and when the Ring Spirit eventually hauled the boy from the from the dark depths of his imagination before his host could drive himself into an all–out panic, making him open his eyes – well, it was only _then _that the pale boy was able to see what the Egyptian was doing, which to him was something very disturbing indeed.

For there he was, clearly at ease and in the confines of a friend's home, surrounded by translucent Tupperware containers full of gaming miniatures. He presented a sight that caused Ryou to gawp, his mouth opening and closing several times as though he were a fish starved for air - there he was, one very happy Egyptian, bent over almost double as he laughed, perfectly innocent-

-if only his current position hadn't happened to be _exactly the same _as the position of the Marik in Ryou's head, the one he was supposed to have left behind in his imagination.

_He's harmless, see?_, the voice in his head was now snarling; and the boy shook his head slightly at that. Harmless or not, whether the Egyptian was deliberately playing on his mind or whether Ryou had just happened to imagine something rather realistic – there was still definitely something about that laugh that set off alarm bells in his head, put him permanently on edge; he may not have known what it was, but there was something. There _had _to be, he reasoned - Marik was laughing himself silly at a seemingly random word, which wasn't exactly normal behaviour for him - and said word _did_ include the word 'love', a direct reference to Chikan Marik if ever there was one.

Thankfully, the Egyptians's snickering didn't last for a long time; he stopped himself from continuing as soon as he figured out that no-one else was joining in. Marik gave a shrug of apology to the others, his next words said almost offhandedly to the silence he had managed to make out of his friends:

"Not that love's _bad_ or anything – I just figured it was sort of funny, because it really does make you feel sick. When you're near _that_ person, you - well, I guess you kinda freeze on the spot. Helpless, I guess."

At that, he gave Ryou the very briefest of looks – and instantly, the boy felt as though a door in his head had swung open and the Arctic itself lay outside, all snow and sub–zero temperatures, a howling blizzard immediately forcing its way through, a sudden snowy blast hitting him square in the face. No sooner had this occurred, than a _chill _of sorts had swept through his brain - it took a few seconds to actually affect him; but when it did, he found himself to be suddenly laid immobile, muscles seizing up and refusing to move, his mind the only part still able to function normally. He supposed he was frozen in every sense but visually; the strange crackling in his ears and the cold numbness sweeping his limbs making him feel as though he were trapped deep inside a iceberg, and his mouth sealed shut – he was utterly unable to cry out, to scream, to–

_Ow! Warn me before you do that!_

_Sorry. _He staved off his mental shrieks as best he could, despite the usual queasiness in his stomach as the spirit tried and tried to take him over without success. In the world outside his head, the blonde now appeared to be addressing the others; explaining a little more about the word Anzu and he had chosen; distracting them from what had just happened to Ryou - the pale teen would have gritted his teeth if he had been able to. He needed to warn them, and fast; yet he couldn't do anything for the moment. _What's going on?_

_There's some sort of block. _A picture popped into the pale boy's mind, presumably sent by the demon – the door the thing usually came through was frozen shut, icicles coating the hinges, a solid ice sheet filling in all the gaps between the painted wood and its frame. It was so cold to the touch that the spirit could not get his hand anywhere near it – air itself appeared to be condensing on its surface.

And _that _was about when Ryou figured it out - he was now freezing cold, to the point where he could not move; his usual protector was now behind a frozen door. He was frozen, helpless.

Just like what Marik had said earlier.

_Marik!, _the voice inside his head snarled, having arrived at the answer at around the same time; it followed the name up with a series of death threats that could have put a clingy fangirl to shame as he expressed his rage. To its host's surprise, the Millennium Ring grew a little warmer with each successive insult; until all too soon it burned against Ryou's chest, so hot that he feared it might set him alight, the spirit now going into a series of mixed grunts and swears as it hurled itself again and again at the frost that had taken its host's mind prisoner, attempting to work him free. _Come on, give me a hand!_, it was howling; but Ryou's attention was drawn back to the outside world by a sudden movement.

Marik had finally finished holding his stomach, and now straightened himself, his expression all innocence. Smiling gently, seemingly unaware of Ryou's current predicament, he stood behind the girl, about to move back to his chair - then paused a moment, a single, dreadful moment, and eventually turned towards the pale teen as though about to give a recounting of his latest evil plan. "So - what are you going to do now, Honda - _Ryou?_" The last word was said with a very, very slight accent, only noticed by its target. "It's your turn, and Anzu and I took out that triple word score for ya!"

_Oh, so he's just recapping,_ the pale teen thought dozily as Marik giggled - the pale teen's thoughts were now beginning to become sluggish, slowed by the cold. However, he was shocked into a panic by the other teen's grin suddenly going savage, red eyes boring into the pale boys' for a long moment; a terrifying monster standing right behind Anzu; before he broke the creepy atmosphere by batting his eyelashes a few times, goofy Marik once again. "Ahhh, the power of love!"

At this, there was a snort of laughter from Jounouchi, which urged Honda into an all-out chortle, setting off Yugi's own sheepish giggles. The three of them were soon reduced to shaking in mirth, holding their sides as the Egyptian went on to make a truly corny speech about the power of love, even going so far as to up the pitch of his voice a little; simpering and smoothing his hair back. As the boys approached a state of near hysteria, Ryou suddenly realized that there was a tactical point to the ridiculous words coming out of Marik's mouth - for amid the gales of laughter, something had happened without the others' noticing, the pale teen unable to call out and warn them of the danger only he had spotted.

You see, Anzu had taken the Egyptian's hand in hers; their fingers intertwining as she giggled with the rowdier boys. A strange, almost _dreamy_ look was crossing her features - pretty soon, she was leaning backwards into Marik's torso, eyes half-closed in obvious pleasure as he kneaded her shoulder a little with his free hand, moving to her side in order to get better access. And with every bit of affection she showed, Marik smiled a little wider, his eyes shining a little more-

-until the smile wasn't a smile, until his eyes weren't his eyes. No, his smile was a grin (not quite _the_ grin, but fast approaching it, now installed as a permanent fixture on his face), his eyes were someone else's (not quite _those _eyes, but they had that deranged look to them now, a too-familiar crimson leaking into the purple iris), and he suddenly appeared to tire of his speech; with a simple flick of his wrist and a final pun, it was all over. Jounouchi, Yugi and Honda's heads all hit the table with some very final _thuds_, Anzu curling herself around her new boyfriend in fright, arms wrapping around his waist - only to recoil when Marik began to giggle; and this time, there was no doubt about it; that laugh was _nasty_.

"Thank you so much..." He combed his fingers absent-mindedly through Anzu's hair - then frowned a moment, a brief look of confusion across his features as he stepped back from her, replaced by that maniacal grin in a heartbeat. "Thanks for killing your friends, Creator. Saves me the trouble."

"H-how?", she whispered, staring up at what could only have been Chikan Marik; the grin, the eyes, the hair all flared up around his head; the thing Ryou had personally never wanted to see ever again.

The psychopath simply laughed in reply, even as the pale teen felt his body finally begin to thaw, Yami Bakura growling inside his mind as he worked on the door. Under the table, he felt his fingers dig into his palm, scratching the skin as his hands curled into fists - at last, he was getting a little mobility back - and inside his head, he found himself working with the spirit, trying to help him get some of the frost away from the door from the other side of it; the Ring still uncomfortably hot against his chest.

_Almost there, almost there_, he repeated to himself; praying that they would break out in time, despite the fact that he had no clue what he was going to do if they did.

"Ahhh, my maker... Have you forgotten my little speech already?" The Egyptian tilted his head to one side, a sick smile playing around the edge of his lips as he watched her closely; a hawk, sizing up his prey. "Love does that too, y'know. Makes you forget."

"H-help!", Anzu whimpered, leaping from her chair when he attempted to reach for her; only to trip over it and land in a tangled mess on the floor. Chikan Marik took another step towards her - then stopped again, with another frown, Ryou's hand giving a little twitch in his lap. "Jounouchi... Honda... _anyone_-"

She stopped; he couldn't see her from where he was, but the pale teen guessed that she must have realized that the others were unconscious. The psychopath laughed again, but this time it was more strained - there was almost a sob in it now, a sort of whining undercurrent to it.

"No-one will help you", he snarled - though from the almost vacant look in his eyes, this seemed to be aimed not at Anzu, but at someone else, someone invisible, standing somewhere behind the girl. For a moment, he paused - but then he shook his head and made his move, coming at her like an oncoming train. To Ryou, the world seemed to explode in a cacophony of sound as the Egyptian dived over the chair she'd fallen over, going out of sight - the Egyptian's howl of triumph, the girl's scream as he presumably landed atop her, the dull thump of the chair knocked about, Yami Bakura yelling out as at last, the ice finally melted away - then, with a _whoosh_, something was flying at Ryou; there was a wind past his face, a flash of light, a scream-

And _that_ was when things went very, very weird.

* * *

**Author's Babble: **Again, it's an odd place to be ending things. Ho hum - oh, and we also have a _cover _now. The link to the original's on my profile, if you wish to see it; I had to make a few edits to get it to fit the FFDotNet format. Yay, I guess...?


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Have you ever had that weird feeling when you're doing something - and then you sort of blink and forget all about what you were doing, and find yourself looking at the evidence of your recent past in some confusion? You know it, I'm sure you do; you've forgotten what you were going to say next in a conversation, you've forgotten what was _in _That One Homework Assignment the minute you walked through the door, you've forgotten all about cutting the tomatoes, and ended up staring at the red pulp and clear juice coating your knife, wondering for a moment if maybe, maybe, you just killed someone.

What Ryou experienced in that moment was _sort of _like that; though he (a) had good reason for his sudden 'space out', as some would call it, and he (b) forgot not only what he was doing, but also all about _everything else_.

Ryou forgot all about what the world looked like, so the room then became a confusing jumble of shapes, unfocused and blurred at the edges, a burning kaleidoscope of yellows and whites and browns, the greens of the game board and the dull greys of the table swirling together – and burning through the mess, like a rising run sweeping away the clouds, came a deep shade of lavender, though from what object that had come from, he could not tell.

Ryou forgot all about what sounds were; so the noisy chaos became as though someone had stuffed his cotton wall; unfocused and _fuzzy__, _the taunts of Chikan Marik losing all clarity, the snarls of Yami Bakura seeming to melt and dissolve away into a string of syllables incomprehensible, as unrecognizable as the world now before him; sounding almost _hollow _in his head, resonating far too much, the echoes soon becoming confused with each other, tripping over themselves, muddling and blurring.

Ryou forgot all about what he was doing; and worse still, why he was doing it – and that was what almost got him killed, in the end. For a moment, his mind screamed out that he was fighting control, fighting, fighting, _fightfightfight_– but it was soon questioning itself; why was he doing it, anyway? – and then his mind was spiraling down and down, this is perfectly fine, just stand and do nothing, say nothing, and–

_letmeinletmeinletmein_

–open the door?

It wasn't a _real _door, of course; more of a very slight, faint distraction around a particular area of his mind; which chose to translate it as a 'door'; a closed entrance, which could be opened if need be. He focused on it, seeing as the only thing he really _could _focus on; he imagined it to be of the hardest of woods, ornately carved with images of himself (but not Bakura, he reminded himself quickly, seeing that he was _not _Ryou), inlaid with bits of copper and maybe a few precious stones. His mind being otherwise vacant, he found that the door was almost _tangible_, his probing thoughts almost seeming to make an odd sort of contact with it. In fact, if he turned his burning eyes away from the sight of the real world, if he closed them, then he could see the door in amazing detail, every knot and grain outlined, the metal glinting a moment in the light of the lavender lightning sneaking under its frame–

And then, the door exploded.

Splinters scattered in all directions, causing the boy to feel a wave of painful pinpricks from what shrapnel hit, as a _new_ mind smashed its way into Ryou's head with an unearthly shriek. In his imagination, lavender flames blazed across the wood, then in the real world shot through his body, eliminating the frost in a heartbeat's worth of burning pain, his very blood seeming to boil – and a moment later, something slammed into the boy's consciousness, sending the rightful owner of the body flying straight out of the control room of his brain; _through _the door he had been trying to unfreeze, and halfway across the room lying on the other side. To be honest, given his velocity, he probably should have hit the far wall, but he hit Yami Bakura first – seconds later, he was completely entangled with the spirit, going down in a total mess of arms and legs, and somehow aware that the pale teen was now launching himself across the room at Chikan Marik, lashing out at the thing, his fists slamming hard into the Egyptian's face and his voice screaming blue murder.

Given that Yami Bakura was the lesser of the two evils, he decided it might be best to support the spirit in this matter for now, and went to cheer him on – then stopped, his cry dying about halfway up his windpipe.

Thing was, the demon was now lying underneath him, the two of them in a pile up of sorts on Ryou's bed; neither of them were in control of the body at this point, and neither had any idea who exactly appeared to be waging war on Chikan Marik.

"Take that back!", the boy was now screaming, his voice carrying an unusual rasp as he kicked Chikan Marik across the floor, then ran over in order to take him by the collar and shake him like a rag doll. "Don't you _dare_–_"_

_Are you doing that?_, Yami Bakura mumbled in his direction, as Ryou rolled off him.

_I thought **you** were!_, Ryou replied, his thoughts muddled and shaky as he climbed to his feet in what he guessed was a soul room _– it must be Bakura's_, he decided, on seeing the shadows dancing around the edges of it. I mean, one probably didn't even need to notice the cracks running spiderlike over the dusty walls, or the bloody stains on the hard stone floor, or the defaced sarcophagus, its outline only just visible in the gloom, for the general idea to be translated across to the pale teen.

Yami Bakura was already on his feet beside the host, staring fixatedly at the wall opposite him; his gaze was as sharp as an eagle's, and at least six times fiercer. His lips moved a little, as though running some complex calculation or other through his mind, before he finally decided to use a scowl - and without another word, the spirit barged right through the stone before him, one hand moving as though to slamming an invisible door behind. Ryou went to follow, but all too soon found that he had problems.

_Big _problems.

Barely a second had passed before the room reverberated with the sounds of a voice that was not Yami Bakura's, not Ryou's. It was a dry, snakelike hiss, accompanied by a shuffling of scales not unlike the rustling of dead leaves.

_Sssleepsss'aaa now... Yessss, ssssleep, ssssleepssssy..._

Around the teen, the shadows crept away from the edges of the room, becoming bolder and bolder – a few very brave ones even flicked out little tendrils to touch his sneakers. But he could not move away from them; frozen in fear as he was; and by the time he had recovered from the initial shock, he was so _tired_, his limbs seemingly made of lead. He stood there, trying not to let his frame stoop, but he was so sleepy, ever so sleepy…

_Sssssleep, little hosssst, _the thing in the darkness of Yami Bakura's heart crooned, slithering softly towards him; he could _tell _that it was coming his way, because the noises were getting louder, the shadows a little more agitated; starting to dart inside his shoes and play with his socks, tugging a little this way and that.

_Who are you?_, he asked, sounding a lot calmer due to his relaxed jaw than how he really felt inside, his stomach churning and blood pumping hard around his body, fire flooding through his veins for a moment – and then it began to cool, his body slowing down, relaxing, breathing forced slower and slower. He tried again to address the creature in the dark; just audible over the constant rustling of the newcomer. _Wh–who…?_ was all he could manage, before he stopped; transfixed by a blood–red gaze.

_Sssssleep, sssssleep, sssssleep..._

"Mmf," he mumbled softly, wanting to protest but too tired to - he was _ever _so tired, barely able to stand, certainly unable to run away as several huge coils fell around him in a cold embrace; despite the smooth appearance, they were rough and scratchy, the boy shifting uncomfortably in their grip.

And the last thing he saw was its eyes.

All four of them.

* * *

Sitting comfortably at the controls of Ryou's body, the young man was well aware of two things:

One, that he was safe now; host and spirit had been subdued, leaving him free to go and beat up that _thing_ molesting his prize, queen of queens that she was.

And two - well, it felt _damn _good to punch Chikan Marik. His current body was certainly much frailer than the mind was used to, but it could still pack a good knee to the creature's most sensitive areas, then quickly glance into the mirror, seeing himself as he surely looked to Anzu dearest; a white haired angel of purity, standing over her, defending her honor.

The screaming was simply because she was awed by his magnificent presence, he was _sure _of it.

And when she was suddenly silenced by his opponent, the Millennium Rod glowing brightly in between the demon's fingers - well, how dare he harm someone as vulnerable as her? Before he could even register that thought, he was lunging at the thing again, fists swinging; and this time, he drew blood from the thing's nose. It was a lovely sight to him, too - he felt _strong_, punching his enemy, watching them cry out; a sort of savage delight he'd never really grown out of.

"Take that! And tha–"

_You bastard!_

He hesitated at the sound of the vicious snarl, halted for good when the spirit wrenched control of the host in one smooth, yet utterly violent movement. _I might have known!_, it screamed at him - and with an almighty _smack_, its soul backhanded his soul hard across the face.

**WHAM!**

_Ow!_, he whined. _What was that for?_

_What did you **think** it was for, body stealer?!_, the other soul returned, the boy now under its control and walking back to the game table, beckoning for Chikan Marik to follow. _Assuming you can think, that is._

In the real world, Yami Bakura placed a small word on the table;** R-I-N-G.**

_'Body stealer'? Really, hypocrite? I think otherwi-_

_Hypocrite? HYPOCRITE? I'll show you hypocrite, you ungrateful little-_

Quite abruptly, Yami Bakura cut off his own attempt at spewing out some Marik-related abuse with a choking noise, distracted by the incredible sight before him. This, of course, was not a noise he usually made; but then again, he wasn't usually presented with a sight quite so enthralling, so magical, so...

_...beautiful._

You see, Chikan Marik appeared to be mutely glaring murder at him, then both him _and _Marik, two minds looking out of the same body as Marik's presence brushed up against his own. The pale teen folded his arms, looking from the man to the game board and back again, trying not to let the splendor of the situation get to him; though with the smell of victory so thick in the air, it was difficult not to feel a little intoxicated.

"Is that your move?" he asked after a moment, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lip, a slight cockiness echoing in his voice. Chikan Marik only stared in reply, his gaze almost listless, blank; as though Yami Bakura was spouting gibberish - and _wait a minute, maybe, just maybe, given what he spelled out..._

A laugh bubbled inside the boy, but he held it in, even as Marik echoed his earlier question with his own mind, the answer coming to the other soul through what Bakura imagined was a mind link between the two of them.

_He says that what he's got there will be his move._

**R-N-E-O-S-P-O**

"Then he must remove his letters, for _that _is not a word to be found in any dictionary", he sneered. It felt _good _to lecture like this, to tell someone that they were wrong and he was right; he hadn't done that in years, hadn't had the opportunity to. It felt so good to stand dominantly over someone - someone who had been a powerful foe at some stage, no doubt - and tell them that they were _wrong_.

Marik relayed this to the tanned teen, who merely grunted and shifted his own letters around; a far cry from the angry reaction the spirit had been hoping for. Still, he decided that this was good enough... well, for now.

**P-R-O-S-E-N-O**

"Not a word!", the pale teen barked, and the teen snarled nastily at the words his better part had translated for him, shifting his letters again:

**R-E-S-P-O-O-N**

_Close, but no banana_, Marik noted before Yami Bakura could mock Chikan Marik; the spirit responded with a little push and a little hiss.

**R-E-N-O-O-P-S**

"What kind of a word is _that?_", the demon growled, jumping in ahead of Marik's snarking this time and feeling a strong sense of triumph as he did so.

**S-P-O-O-N-E-R**

"Turning it backwards makes it no better," he purred, pleased with his taunt this time. Then, to the other soul: _Why isn't he_ spelling _anything?  
_

_I don't think he knows how to.__ Not without my memories._

"Of course... Only two days old. A _baby_." The young man's smile went wide, sharklike, as he eyed up the once-predator, now prey. "Let the Shadow Game begin, then... This should be over swiftly, for such a weakling as you."

_Yes!_, Marik crowed as the room became darker, black shadows weaving around the two of them like smoke; at first translucent, but soon pressing in on the two teens, becoming darker and darker, applying an odd _pressure _of sorts. Chikan Marik howled outrage, and Yami Bakura laughed in his face; laughed, because he knew he'd already won, and all that was left now was the _kill_; he would be sure to drag it out, too, seeing as it was such a certainty.

_You don't mind your body being destroyed, I take it...?_

_Anything for my Anzu._

_Good._

"Since you are in _my _house, I will apply a little house rule of mine - whoever loses, _dies. _Pity you don't remember that, or I could have said 'Sound familiar' - ah, well." He grinned like a maniac recently come into possession of a large chainsaw, his sides shaking with mirth for several seconds before he managed to continue. "This will be child's play... A fine hunt, and a fine revenge!"

And from the _look _on his prey's face, he guessed that Marik must have translated it all to him.

_Excellent._

Revenge, in Yami Bakura's opinion, was always sweetest when your enemy could see it coming, and there was no way he could possibly escape from it.

It's safe to say that this revenge was looking pretty damn sucrose.

* * *

**Author's Babble:**

- Late chapter is laaate, because my USB decided to have a little fun with me.

- Summary got changed, because pizza. Category was also changed, because this is a wicked fic to try and categorize properly.

- This chapter is more much-needed plot development than anything else. But at last, we have a Shadow Game, two-maybe-three psychos, and a nice little match all set up and ready to go. So - place your bets on who's going to win/what's going to happen next, I guess...?

- I finally have an author insert. Sort of. Huzzah~


End file.
